I'm not.
At least, not if Democrats campaign like they did this year.
There have already been plenty of diaries up about what went wrong last night. I don't feel like rehashing everything here, because you've probably heard it all before, but the basic problem was that in most races, the Democratic candidate decided to simply bank on their Republican opponent being fucking insane.
And yes, Democrats, your Republican opponent is insane. That might be a good enough reason for some of us, but for most people, it's not.
Democrats have concocted the excuse that our voters don't show up for midterms. That's a self-fulfilling prophecy, it turns out. Democrats don't show up for midterms because Democrats campaign on the assumption that Democrats don't show up for midterms, which leads to Alison Lundergan Grimes refusing to answer the question of whether or not she voted for President Obama. It leads to Mark Warner criticizing President Obama's handling of ebola. (Democrats lucked out on that one because some incompetent fuck at the NRSC decided that Ed Gillespie didn't stand a chance and pulled out of the race.)
The common denominator in almost all of Democrats' losses last night is that Democrats spent most of their time trying to court, basically, Romney voters. They bought into the Fox News-fueled myth that the Obama administration has been horrible.
But that's okay, because our voters will show up again in 2016 and the Senate map is better for us, right?
If you believed that President Obama only won reelection in 2012 because Democrats actually voted in 2012, then you're missing half the equation. Democrats voted in 2012, at least in some part because Republicans in many places had spent two years reminding everyone just how terrible they were, but also because President Obama campaigned as a Democrat. He campaigned on getting the wealthy to pay their fair share of taxes. He campaigned on his record (which, by the way, is actually still pretty good.) President Obama won because he actively worked to appeal to Democrats, not because Democrats just happened to show up and vote for him.
And last night, many Democratic candidates decided that the way to win reelection was to run as Tea Party Lite. We're not as crazy as the Republicans, sure, and some of us might even support reproductive choice and marriage equality, but other than that, what are we offering you? Bread and butter issues are more important to most voters than border security, ISIS, ebola, and whatever else the Republicans are scaring you with this week, but were we campaigning on bread and butter issues?
We used to point and laugh at the Christian right because they would show up election after election and vote for the Republicans because of social issues that Republicans ended up doing nothing about. But they sure as hell would go back to the Christian right and ask for their votes again because damnit, this time they were actually going to do something about abortion. We promise! (And now they actually are.) But that doesn't work for Democrats. Democrats promise voters that they'll actually make their lives better, and frequently don't follow through, then expect those same voters to show up again. Except unlike the Christian right, we're not stupid.
But do you trust our 2016 nominee to learn the lessons? Ted Cruz may be insane, but even he can beat us in 2016 if Democrats don't show up to vote. And Democrats aren't going to show up if our nominee is running a campaign to court the people who actually like Ted Cruz.